Learning new skills.

When we made our trailer, magazine cover and film poster we used a lot of new technology, which I hadn’t used before previous to this project. The first thing I hadn’t used before were the Macs. However once I played around with them for a bit I soon got the hang of everything on there. Another technology I hadn’t used before was the editing system final cut express. When we edited our 2 minute opening for our AS coursework we used pinnacle which looked a lot easier than final cut express, however we had a chance to actually edit something on there which was our music video. After editing that on there I got the hang of it and realised that it had more options than pinnacle which could benefit in our trailer.

We filmed using flip cameras which I know how to use, having one myself. We decided to use these as opposed to the video cameras because we thought as they were HD flips they would produce the best quality picture. When we came to upload our footage it was very straightforward which was a plus.

We made the soundtrack of our trailer on GarageBand which is a music editing system on the Macs. We decided to make our own music as we thought it would be fun to compose it to make it how we want it. Also we weren’t allowed to se copyright music. The program was fairly simple to use and there were many different options to choose from. We had some trouble in the group decided which sounds to use but I think we made the best choice in the end.

For our poster we had to use photoshop. I was aware of the program and had used it a little bit before, but I am now aware how many things you can do on it to edit a picture. I never realised how many steps people go through to edit something, especially with our poster. We also used photoshop for our GIF’s in the title of our trailer which was a little complicated to grasp at first but with some help with our members of our group I think it paid off.

Target audience research 2

We asked 20 people to watch our trailer and fill in a questionnaire that would help us evaluate it. We asked mostly closed questions so it would be easier to make into graphs. The first question we asked was “what sort of genre would you say this film is?” We wanted to ask this to make sure that we have followed all the typical conventions of a thriller trailer making it easy for the audience to recognise. I was glad that the majority of participants thought it was a thriller, and am not very critical to why some people ticked horror as those two catergories are quite similar. In our first audience feedback questionnaire we asked the question “what film would you prefer to watch”, to which people put horror as their first choice. However we felt that thrillers have more ideas and we wanted to do a more psychological thriller.

Our next question was “of the genre you picked out, does it follow the typical conventions”, this answers the question if people really think the trailer is a thriller and I am glad the majority picked yes.

The third question was a follow up from our original questionnaire question which was “do you like the hero of the film to be a boy or girl?”. Most participants put yes to having a boy but we were not disheartened as we thought there isn’t really a hero in our trailer so it wouldn’t matter. However we found with this question boys liked that the protagonist was a girl but girls didn’t. I think this is just personal preference and the reason the boys said yes was probably because of the attractiveness of our main actress.

We were glad that most people said yes they would want to watch the film and yes it does build tension as those were the two purposes of our trailer; to build tension, and get people to watch it.

 The last question was “do you like the fact that she is a similar age to you”. We asked our target audience this specifically as we wanted to know if that would help them relate to the character more. I’m glad most people said yes.

We decided another way of getting feedback was by putting the trailer on facebook and letting people comment on there. We were aware not everyone on facebook is the same age as our target audience but it was a chance to show if anyone not in our age group would want to watch the film. We were very pleased with the result most people had very positive feedback. Some people had criticisms about some of the filming and continuity but there were very minor and we managed to change that quickly or tell people why that was meant to be there. I was pleased with someone’s comment “I like how the whole chess theme is incorporated into the plot like ‘one wrong move’ and ‘your turn’ it gives the storyline a strategic, logical psychological vibe to the film” this was very positive feedback in my opinion and I am glad people understood what was going on and liked how we used chess in the trailer.

We decided also to show our media studies class our trailer, post and magazine front cover so we could receive feedback from other media experts. This was good because the media students were doing the same tasks as us so they would understand more then the members of the public. I was pleased that we got a lot of positive feedback for our trailer, poster and magazine cover one person said they "loved the bath scene". However it wasn't all positive as one person said the storyline was "unclear" but we thought that our film may not make sense to everyone as it doesn't appear to what genre or film they may enjoy. On our poster lots of people liked the chess on top of Megan's face however a few people said it made her eyes look strange.

All in all I think our feedback is mainly positive but has a few criticism for minor things.

The effectiveness of our main product and ancillary texts.

We decided that our trailer, magazine front cover and film poster where all aimed at a mainstream audience. We found that there is a high demand for thriller films and it doenst cater for certain types of people, as males and females can all watch.

How do the three elements work together?
I believe all three of our products have similar themes to them that make them work together successfully. We knew that our magazine front cover and poster was going to be seen by a lot of people so we made sure we put a lot of effort into them so they looked professional and eye catching for the audience. We came up with a colour scheme of red, grey and black which we kept the same in all three elements. We used three colours because we saw on our magazine research that most magazines use three colours of font. Another thing we kept similar was the font. We wanted to use a unique interesting font so we went on to a font website and tested a few out. Although they were effective fonts we thought that they were to excessive for our product so we decided to use Perpetua on Microsoft word. We made sure any text we used on the products was all the same. Another thing that is seen on all three products is the use of the title ‘Checkmate’ and Megan. As Megan is the only actress appearing in our trailer we thought it would be best just to keep her on the magazine and poster. We kept Megan in character in all three products, the magazine front cover is from a scene in the movie, and the poster is her looking distressed which is a big part of our trailer. The use of ‘Checkmate’ on the products is important to show the audience exactly what the film is and make them want to watch it.
Although the magazine cover and film poster show Megan in character they are two very different shots. When we did the magazine cover we took many different photos of her in character but also out of character, however when coming to choose a photo we thought that the out of character shots were too posed and didn’t show what our film was about. We settled for this photo because we liked how it was slightly out of focus and the colours in the photo make it look effective. The poster however is quite a stage shoot but I think it really pays off because of the extreme close up of Megan’s face and the use of a chess piece. These are two very different photos; however I feel that they work well in attracting different types of audiences because of the contrast of the two.

I think the element that is successful in the trailer is the use of the different speeds of cuts made throughout the trailer. We wanted the pace of cuts to be slow at the beginning but then get faster and faster by the end. We found in our thriller trailer research lots of trailers did this and we thought that it looked very effective. I personally like the montage of cuts near the end of the trailer as it contributes to the story of the film a lot as it shows the mental breakdown of Megan. I think a great asset it the uses of dialogue on top of these cuts which help explain the film further. We saw of trailer research that this happened a lot, where a character would be talking on top of the clips which would help the audience understand what was happening in the cuts. We also used this speeding up of clips to keep the audience hooked and to shock them by what they saw. We hoped that by doing this it would make them want to watch it. One of the difficulties we had to overcome in our trailer was the bathroom shot. When we filmed this we didn’t take into account that it needed to be dark for this shot to work, however when we came to editing we saw that this was a problem. We still wanted the scene to be in the trailer as we thought it was good at helping the story flow. We decided to use an effect on the shot to make it go dark when the light switch was turned off. I think this worked and it was the best we could do as at the time we were running out of editing time and still had rest of the trailer to edit. I think if we had more time I would make a suggestion to re film this.

Another element that worked well in our film poster is the use of the chess on top of Megans face. We made the decision to put the chess on top of Megan’s face to show how much of an impact it has made on her life, almost like it follows her wherever she goes like a ghost. The chess was made transparent for that reason, as originally we weren’t going to have the chess transparent at all. I like the extreme close up of Megan’s face as you can see the expression on her face and the smudged makeup it shows vulnerability and even panic she is showing. I think personally it looks like a real poster, it has the billing block at the bottom and the title and main actresses name at the top. I think one of the weaknesses of the poster is the quite pronounced outline of the chess on the left side, I feel that if we blended it a bit more it would look more ghost-like, however we didn’t have enough time and my group felt that it was the best it could be so we didn’t change it.

The thing I like the best about the magazine front cover is the layout of it. I feel that all the choices we made, helped it look like a real front cover, from the use of different sized fonts and colours to the layout of where everything should go. We researched many magazine covers and found that they used different sized fonts the bigger the font the more important the text. We incorporated this into our cover and I think it worked well. We made sure the title of our film was large and Megan’s name as well. We added all the things that are found on a magazine; the title and date, the text on top of the title, the bar code and the cost. i think one of the main difficulties of the magazine was where to put the text on the magazine and what photo to use. We all liked different photos for different reasons however we went through all of them individually and pointed out the pros and cons of it so we could make a decision systematically. We also had differences where to put the text, half of our group felt some of the text wasn’t big enough and there wasn’t enough text to begin with and the other half of our group though that by adding more text it would make the cover look to crowded. In the end we did add more text and felt that this decision benefited the outcome of our poster.

 I feel that our products do have some weaknesses to them, however they were mostly due to individual differences, time management, editing skills and experience. However I feel that we put a lot of time and effort to make theses weaknesses as minimum as possible and tried our hardest to overcome them.